Movie Review: "The End of the Tour"

By STEPHEN SILVER (Patch Staff)

“The End of the Tour” is a great movie that’s about many different things. Fame. Literature. Male friendship and jealousy. Addiction, depression and suicide. But it’s much more entertaining than a movie about those things ought to be. And even more impressively, it’s incredibly exciting for a film that’s about 90 percent two men talking to each other.

The film tells the story of three days journalist David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) spent interviewing literary legend David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel), during the book tour for his masterpiece “Infinite Jest” in 1996. The conversation goes back and forth from affectionate to hostile and both, as the two men travel together from Wallace’s home in rural Illinois to Minneapolis and back.

It’s clear there are several dynamics at play. Lipsky, a failed novelist, is jealous of Wallace’s success and respect, yet it’s clear Wallace is far from comfortable in his own skin. Meanwhile, we see Wallace as a guy who, success and riches notwithstanding, prefers to live in a modest house in rural Illinois, teach college, and not wear especially nice clothes.

The film was directed by James Ponsoldt, who made the fantastic Miles Teller/Shailene Woodley film “The Spectacular Now” in 2013 and returns with another standout dramatic effort. Adapted by screenwriter Donald Margulies from Lipsky’s article and subsequent book, the film successfully remains riveting even though it consists almost entirely of two men talking to one another.

And that’s made possible by both lead performances. Segel is fantastic as Wallace, straying pretty far from his usual persona and making a man who most watching the movie only know from the page come to life. Eisenberg also gives one of his best performances, one considerably better than this week’s “American Ultra.” There are small roles for others like Joan Cusack, Ron Livingston, Mamie Gummer and Anna Chlumsky, but none are given a whole lot to do.

There are also various enjoyable affectations of the ‘90s, whether it’s large amounts of flannel, indoor smoking, and people actually getting excited to see the Mall of America (the characters go to see “Broken Arrow” at the same theater where I, the following summer, caught “Con Air.”)

Sort of hanging over everything is the knowledge that Wallace will die, of suicide, in 2008, as well as that Lipsky is especially well known for anything besides having interviewed Wallace, written a book about him and now this movie. And I realize that both Wallace’s family and friends of his have objected to this portrayal and the movie itself. I felt like it handled the man’s legacy respectfully.

The movies have never quite known what to do with Wallace’s work. “Infinite Jest” is probably totally unfilmable, and great as his journalism was I can’t think of any piece of his that would make an obvious movie. John Krasinski tried a few years ago with a take on “Brief Interviews With Hideous Men,” but that didn’t work for a minute. “The End of the Tour,” however, does.